How to archive for the future? Ensuring the Present benefits from a Relevant Past

Daniel J. Caron, Deputy Head and Librarian and Archivist of Canada and Eric Mechoulan,Université de Montréal

If we want to
preserve accessibility to valuable information about legal, political, social
and cultural discourses in an era of information abundance, it becomes vital to
design carefully how we distinguish between noise and significant pieces of
information. In order to secure our future, we need to know how to organize
our past.

About Daniel

Daniel J. Caron joined the federal public
service in 1982. In 2009, he was appointed Librarian and Archivist of Canada.
One year later, he launched the modernization initiative to ensure that Library
and Archives Canada could meet the multiple challenges of the digital
environment. This initiative is a call for collaboration, epistemologically
grounded institutional policies and policy driven decisions. In addition to his
organizational experience, Mr. Caron is a seasoned author and speaker on public
administration and issues related to information and memory both in Canada and
abroad. Mr. Caron has also taught in several Canadian universities. He holds a
bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Economics from the Université Laval,
and obtained a doctorate in Applied Human Sciences from the Université de
Montréal. Mr. Caron has been Chair of the Forum of National Archivists for the
International Council on Archives since 2010. He is the author of WEB HT.0 Pour une société informée: la pertinence numérique et ses défis pour les sociétés démocratiques au XX1e siècle, Hermann 2011.

About Eric

Eric Mechoulan is a professor at the Université de Montréal and visiting prof
at Harvard, chair of the Intermedial Research Center on
Letters, Arts and Techniques as well as the Interdisciplinary
Research Center on Emerging Technologies (Montreal). His most
recent research project is about “Archiving in the digital
age”. Recent publications : special journal issue on
“Archiving”, Intermediality, 2012; D’où nous
viennent nos idées? Métaphysique et intermédialité, VLB,
2010; La culture de la mémoire, PUM, 2008